U.S. News & World Report gives health sciences programs top ranking

For the 15th consecurive year, U.S. News & World Report ranked the UW School of Medicine the No. 1 medical school in the nation for training primary-care physicians. The school’s programs were also ranked No. 1 in family medicine and in rural health for the 17th consecutive year.

In addition to family and rural medicine, newly ranked medical specialities were AIDS (fourth), woment’s health (seventh), internal medicine (sixth), geriatrics (seventh), drug and alcohol abuse (eighth), and pediatrics (seventh). The biomedical/bioengineering program, a joint program of the School of Medicine and the College of Engineering, ranked fifth.

The U.S. News rankings, which consider peer assessments, rankings by residency program directors, NIH funding, and other factors, assign just two overall rankings for medical schools: one for biomedical research and the other for primary care. The UW and Harvard University were the only two medical schools in the nation to rank in the top seven for excellence in both of these areas.

In NIH funding, the UW School of Medicine was again second only to Harvard among all U.S. medical schools in grant funding from the NIH. UW Medicine faculty received $579.7 million in NIH funding in 2007 — $93 million above the third-ranked school in this category, the University of Pennsylvania.

The UW School of Medicine again had the distinction of being the only medical school in the nation ranked in the top 10 in all specialties in the annual survey.

Other UW programs ranked by U.S. News in the top 10 include the graduate program in occupational therapy, which was ninth; the pharmacy program, which was ranked fifth; and the graduate program in social work was ranked fourth in the nation.